


(In)Justice

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Dysphoria, Gen, Misogyny (mentioned), Revenge, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven hates it, and he hates the House of Ostia for sparing him because of it. After all, surely cold, self-serving Ostia would have done away with the final remnant of the House of Cornwell - if they'd known he was a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(In)Justice

**Author's Note:**

> **This is my first time writing a fic with a trans character, so please call me out if anything I've written is problematic**. All feelings are the character's own, and do not reflect the opinions of the author. 
> 
> **Trigger warning for gender dysphoria, body dysphoria, and misogyny.** (Raven himself isn't misogynistic, but his society is.)

He supposed the House of Ostia thought they could get away with it. After all, the stories of vengeance always required a strapping young man to rise up and mete out justice to the destroyers of his parents. And, to ignorant eyes, Cornwell only had two girls. One of them abroad, at that. They must have thought it was easy pickings.

Fuck them.

His gut burned with the knowledge of their contempt – that, when they were ruining his House and drove his parents to take their own lives, they only let him disappear because they thought him a _woman_. They would have kept an eye out for an angry young man. But a tomboyish young woman made a good spectacle, but nothing worth tracking –

_Fuck_ them.

He hated the body that made others look down on him as a second-class being, that lacked the strength in its limbs that any common brute claimed as a birthright, and that had made his parents tell him that, for all that he “would have made a fine man”, the most he could ultimately do for his house was to appeal to a well-placed man and marry well. He hated it, and drove it to its limits as a revenge upon it. He couldn’t eliminate its features, but he could hide it and never speak of it. And it _would_ serve him to take revenge upon House Ostia. He wouldn’t allow it to do otherwise.

Had House Cornwell survived, he wouldn’t have been allowed to live like this. He would have been forced to dandy himself up and wear disgusting dresses that emphasized the parts of his appearance he hated _most_ and listen to idiots telling him that he would never get a man if he didn’t stop acting like he thought he _was_ one –

And that insult, that near-violation, made his mind go red. That House Ostia had granted his youthful wish and _liberated_ him, in a sense, by destroying all he loved – the contradiction made him sick, and the irrational feeling that he was betraying his parents’ memory by no longer continuing the act he had put on while they lived made him sick, and _all of it made him sick._

So House Ostia would be no more, as House Cornwell was no more. And the mercenary Raven would vanish off the margins of history, unknown and unmissed.

He numbed out every part of him that mourned for what could have been by telling it that he could either be remembered as Rachel of Cornwell, minor wife of some minor lord, or as Raven of Nowhere, slayer of Uther and Hector of Ostia. Anything that told him there were other choices – he ignored. He was set upon this path, and it was a bitter tonic he’d drink to the dregs.

At least Lucius understood. Lucius and Priscilla – the only two people he’d told back when he was known by a different name and a softer face. His little sister had believed him and respected who he was from the moment he’d brought himself to tell her. Etruria – he’d thank the gods if he believed in them – hadn’t changed that. And Lucius… well, Lucius understood what it was to be thought a woman when you were a man. Soft-skinned, fair-faced Lucius – who nonetheless was recognized as male in the eyes of gods and men, simply because he had some parts and lacked others.

He’d felt that a monstrous injustice when he was young and naïve, but all that had fallen out in the years since had taught him that all the world was made of monstrous injustice, and the only justice that existed was what men _forced_ upon it.

He hadn’t the arts to correct the injustice written in his own flesh. He didn’t know if any mage did.

But at least he could carve justice into the flesh of the heirs of House Ostia. And for that, he only needed this sword and these two hands.

**Author's Note:**

> "that lacked the strength in its limbs that any common brute claimed as a birthright" - in translation, he resents that his body lacks the testosterone production, and thus upper-body strength, that cisgender men take for granted. 
> 
> On the subject of that line - I know that it's *misogyny* that caused people to write off Raven when they thought he was female, not his *body*. However, even if that was pointed out to him, he would probably answer with 'The way everyone treats women is stupid. You think I don't know that? But I'm a **man**. If they treated me as the same as they treated any other man, I'd be happy. But they treat me as a woman, and **that's** because of **this damned body.** ' So... yes. That's not my point of view, but it's what I believe the character's point of view would be (coming from a medieval society, etc...), and so, in-fic, I'm sticking to that. 
> 
> Again, **please correct me** if I've written anything in a problematic or incorrect way. I want to improve.


End file.
